All For Nothing
by Morna
Summary: Link's homecoming from the war is not quite how his wife imagined it to be. Post-OoT, child-timeline. Malink.


All For Nothing

The bowl in her hands fell to the floor and shattered as she heard the door bang open and she spun on her heel. Terror seized her, cold and hard. There was no else there but her, and she had scheduled no customers.

Malon's hand reached out blindly towards the counter at her right as she struggled in the fading twilight to make out the figure braced in her doorway. From the breadth and set of the shoulders, she knew the person was male and most likely young. Her fingers found the handle of a butcher knife and gripped it tightly.

The stranger gave a shuddering breath and took one unsteady step towards her. The rancher instinctively stepped back and raised the blade between them. It too dropped to the floor though like the bowl when she realized who stood before her.

He was different, very different, from the last time she had seen him. Still, she would know him anywhere no matter how he came to her.

Link looked tired and worn like a hunted thing with demons licking at his heels. His clothes were so tattered and stained she could not make out what color they were anymore. His shield was missing and his chainmail was rusted and broken in many places. He seemed caked in blood and dirt from the soles of his boots to the top of his head. Nausea churned in her stomach as she thought on whose blood it might be. He did not appear gravely injured, but he had always hidden pain well.

The worst though was his face. His cheekbones were raw and sharp, pressing against his paper-thin skin, and his expression was wild and haunted. He had lost an eye, and the lid was sunken and sloppily sewn shut.

The knight stared at her obliviously as if he had suddenly forgotten where he was and why he had come. His callused fingers flexed in confusion as he tried to take stock of his surroundings.

"Link," she said softly and reached out towards him with her hand.

His head snapped towards her at the sound of the familiar word.

"It's me, Malon," she continued and pressed one hand to her chest where her pendant rested.

His blue eye narrowed and his mouth started to form a word, but he stopped himself.

For some reason he still seemed puzzled as to who she was though something inside him had obviously driven him there. Then an idea came to her, she reached up and pulled the pin out of her hair and let those red waves come tumbling down around her face and shoulders.

The action seemed to unlock something in him because his shoulders sagged in relief and his hands relaxed at his sides. "Wife," he said at last.

"Yes," she breathed and took a step towards him. When he did not startle or back away, Malon placed her hands on his shoulders and looked him over for any wounds. "What are you doing back? I thought the King still had soldiers out in the field."

The tension and terror returned to him and filled up the room until Malon thought she would choke on it. "He does," Link said hollowly, his eyes becoming unfocused again as he traveled somewhere far, far away from Lon Lon Ranch.

His wife swallowed at that. If the army was still abroad then it must have meant her husband had deserted, and she could think of no good reason as to why he would do such a thing. A chill ran up her spine, and her nausea returned. Link was anything but a coward. If he had run it was because something had made him.

"Then why are you here?" she said gently, running her hands up and down his arms, ignoring the filth now coating her palms.

His throat worked as he tried to produce words to tell her something. "Y-you don't . . . I," he muttered as he struggled to speak.

"Sit down," she said, "I'll get you some water and something to eat. Then you can tell me." The rancher turned to get a pitcher, but his sudden grip on her wrist stopped her.

"No," he said and stared at her with a mixture of things she could not understand. What had her husband seen in battle?

"No, what?" she inquired softly, sitting down on a bench and hoping to encourage him to join her.

"No," he repeated stubbornly and paced restlessly. "I just . . .I can't." His hands came up to his head and threaded through his hair in frustration as his strides quickened.

"Link," she said, and he stopped as abruptly as he had started.

His mouth thinned into a grim line, and Malon waited for him to do something. She had never seen him like this. Link had always been calm and reserved. She had only heard him raise his voice a handful of times over the thirteen years they had known each other. He had always been the one constancy in her life, the one thing that would not fall apart or betray her. To see him like this shook her.

Then his knees gave out and hit the floor. He leaned forward and buried his face in her lap. His shoulders began to shake violently with muffled sobs, and his tears soaked the linen of her skirts. Malon sat there frozen with her hands hovering helplessly in the air over him. She had never seen him cry before not even when he'd nearly chopped off his finger the one time he had attempted to make dinner. The most she had ever seen was that look of quiet disappointment and sadness that sometimes flitted across his features as he stared out over Hyrule Field towards the Korkiri Forest or Hyrule Castle. She had tried to ask him about it, but he had always shrugged it off with a rueful smile. Now, she wondered what secrets he hid buried deep within his heart.

Finally, she settled her hands on the back of his head and ran her fingers through his tangled golden hair. It was oily and matted in places, but the gesture seemed to soothe him temporarily. "Tell me now," she whispered into his ear as she leaned down over him. "What happened?"

"They wanted us to kill them all, even the children, babes in their mothers' arms," he replied hoarsely.

"Who?"

"The Gerudo. They wanted them gone. All gone," he sobbed brokenly as he rested the side of his cheek against the top of her thigh.

She ghosted her fingers over the nape of his neck and her brow furrowed. "That doesn't make any sense. Their leader was executed years ago. They have been-"

"It doesn't matter," he said in a voice so full of bitter resignation that it sounded as if it belonged to another man. "It doesn't matter. None of it matters," he continued, anger coloring his words.

"What doesn't matter?" Malon asked helplessly, once again lost as to how handle her husband.

He turned his face into her lap again, and the tears started. Between the sobs, she could make out words and sentences but none of them made any sense to her. He rambled on about stones and temples, and masks and falling moons. The words came out strangled as he cried himself out, the salt of his tears seeping into his wife's clothing.

His hands came up and fisted in her skirts, knotting the material between his fingers until his knuckles went white. At last, he looked up at her with his good blue eye red from weeping and said, "Don't you see? It was all for nothing. Everything I did was for nothing."

**This is a corrected version of the original. For some reason, both the draft version and the final version showed up in the document. Anyways, sorry for the confusion about that. **


End file.
